1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods of advertising through a computer network, and particularly to a paid media online cooperative method for purchasing advertising on a search engine.
2. Description of the Related Art
AdWords is Google®'s (Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.) marketing tool that offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution.
The advertising user creates ads and chooses keywords, which are words or phrases related to the advertising user's business. Along with the keyword specification, the advertiser specifies the maximum amount he/she is willing to pay per click, referred to as the maximum CPC. Ad placement will be determined by the maximum CPC, along with a variety of other parameters used by the search engine. When a search is done on Google using one of the advertiser's chosen keywords, the advertiser's advertisement may appear in the vicinity of the search results. Thus, the advertising targets an audience that is predisposed towards the advertiser's product or service.
The ordering of the paid-for listings depends on other advertisers' bids (PPC) and the “quality score” of all ads shown for a given search. The quality score is calculated by historical click-through rates (CTR), relevance of an advertiser's ad text and keywords, an advertiser's account history, and other relevance factors, as determined by Google. The quality score is also used by Google to set the minimum bids for an advertiser's keywords. The minimum bid takes into consideration the quality of the landing page as well, which includes the relevancy and originality of content, navigability, and transparency into the nature of the business. It is generally understood that the parameters used can change dynamically and do not always lead to a price or relevancy factor predicted by an advertising user within Google's keyword auctioning framework. It is believed by many that within Google's auctioning framework, participants do not necessarily fare best when they truthfully reveal any private information asked for by the auction mechanism, such as the value the user assigns to a keyword, in the form of a “truthful” bid.
Within Google's site-targeted advertising application, an advertiser may use an AdWords control panel to enter keywords, domain names, topics, demographic targeting preferences, and the like. Google then places the ads on what Google determines to be relevant sites within its content network. If domain names are targeted, Google also provides a list of related sites for placement. Advertisers may bid on a cost-per-impression (CPI) or cost-per-click (CPC) basis for site targeting.
With placement targeting, it is possible for an ad to take up the entire ad block, rather than have the ad block split into two to four ads, resulting in higher visibility for the advertiser.
While Google has established a minimum cost-per-thousand impressions bid for placement targeted campaigns, the minimum CPC bid is generally believed to be a nominal 0.01.
Google automatically determines the subject of pages and displays relevant ads based on the advertisers' keyword lists. To help clients with the complexity of building and managing AdWords accounts, search engine marketing agencies and consultants offer account management as a business service. This has allowed organizations without advertising expertise to reach a global, online audience. Users may also find assistance in a Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which provides a list of related keywords for a specific website or keyword. Within Google Adwords, the primary key performance indicator (KPI) is cost-per-click (CPC). Advertisers generally seek an advertising campaign that is low in cost and also effective in delivering traffic to their sites. Therefore, it would be desirable to remove CPC as a key performance indicator, which would have the effect of driving advertising costs down among cooperating advertisers.
Thus, a paid media online cooperative method solving the aforementioned problems is desired.